[xyst]

> but that publishing her results could encourage others to reject conventional treatment and try something similar, says Sherkow.

I don’t see the ethical dilemma proposed here. If patient or doctor exhausts through traditional medicine, and have the financial means and expertise to do “self experimentation”. There is nothing wrong with this. As long as the self experimentation is limited to the patient themselves (1), then there’s no ethical issue.

edit; although with recent change in political atmosphere in USA, there’s probably some group out there that thinks this is “playing god” or some bs.

[devjab]

The ethical dilemma here is probably based around “individual vs community”, but it’s hard to say when there is no knowledge of how it actually affects the “community” in the long term. The risk is that inspiring people to self-treat might cause more harm than good, but again, nobody really knows.

I’d argue that it was more of a liability refusal from the journals, disguised as ethics. It should probably noted that it’s not an outright lie though. Again it’s hard to say considering we don’t have access to the refusals.